This course starts by exploring participants’ personal experiences, unmet needs, and adaptive strategies around developing competence in childhood and at other critical points in life. We explore how we can fine-tune the supervision process to respond to therapists’ particular adaptive styles. In Imago Theory, we explore how wounding in developmental stages presents in the early stages of couples’ therapy as a primary element in the power struggle. Therapists can also be triggered into competence wounds when they are learning a new approach and feel challenged in their ability to help particular couples.

This course also looks at the work of Scott Miller, Barry L. Duncan, and others from the Institute for the Study of Therapeutic Change in Chicago regarding what helps therapists become highly competent and beliefs that therapists hold around their effectiveness.